TL

catching up …..

“I suggest that we can NOT assume Timothy would take the instructions as generic if Paul had been exclusively specific. I suggest that Paul was letting Timothy know that his instructions absolutely could be expanded to other cases through the intentional use of the generic at first.”

hmmm. I didn’t think of Timothy taking the instructions as generic. I would think that Timothy would take them as specific to the situation. However, even for Timothy if a similar situation arose in the near future, I would think he could think back to Paul’s instructions and not feel he needed to ask Paul again but apply the same wisdom. This is the way we do it today. So, again, Timothy wouldn’t need a generic to know that if a similar situation arose, it is possible (though not absolute) that he could respond in a similar way.